Well for me this thread has come full circle. Approximately 35 days ago I took my first 3 cuttings from a White Widow plant. I built a homemade clone dome from an inexpensive aluminum cooking pan with clear plastic lid from Wal-Mart. I cut the stems on a 45 degree angles, I trimmed the extra leaves, I shaved the ends of the stems, I dipped them in rooting powder and put them in peat pellets.
I thought to myself this is a piece of cake. Nothing hard about this at all. Two full weeks later my cuttings were still that, just cuttings. No rooting yet as when I would take the dome off within 15 minutes they would all three start drooping. Finally, after nearly 4 weeks one showed signs of having roots. Long story short, after 4 weeks I lost my patience. I took all three and potted them. I patted each one on it's little plant fanny and said this is it girls. Live or die, it's all up to you at this point. Well, the one that survived is starting to grow a bit. Still looks pretty pathetic since most of the yellow/brown leaves had fallen off. But it will make it I am confident.
So for me it was back to the drawing board. I did more research and homework. I bought some Clonex solution and a waterproof heating pad for under my clone dome. It was time to try again. I mixed up the Clonex solution in my water, corrected the PH to 5.5 and soaked my peat pellets in the solution for about half an hour. One thing I changed from the first time was taking a small artist's paint brush and enlarging the hole for the stem so it fit in easily. Last time as I was pushing the stem in it was scraping off the rooting powder. This time I did not shave the stems. I just cut them at a 45 degree angle, dipped them into the rooting powder, tapped off the excess, and gently inserted them into the pellets. Once in I pushed the sides in all around to bring the peat into contact with the stems. I cut a total of 6 cuttings from the same White Widow plant as last time. Into the aluminum pan they went. The pan then was placed onto the heating pad into the cloning/seedling box I made. This is what I found today when I checked on them.
I'm telling you I was smiling from ear to ear. My whole goal was to take a cutting and turn it into a healthy clone and doing as little damage to it as possible so it could move right into a pot and start growing as opposed to recovering for a couple weeks. Here she is in her new home looking ready to take on the world. I would like to state that I had my "fishing" lens on the camera, so although it's a large clone it is not as big as the photo make it appear.
I would like to thank Imhigh85 for starting this thread and making me learn the way I want to make clones. He has helped a lot of people in this hobby get off on the right foot. The simple way does indeed work which he has proven. I just needed to see if I could use the modern tools to produce healthier clones in a shorter amount of time on a shoestring budget.